It's Getting Hot in Herre (09 Apr)

The latest in climate/clean car/sustainability/energy issues...

First off, the movie trailer I've been hankering to see for a couple weeks: Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (hosted over at Moviefone). It... looks... awesome!

Next, a couple of news items from the Seattle area spotted in the Puget Sound Business Journal. The Green Car Co. dealership (in Kirkland, over on the Eastside, across the lake from Seattle proper) will become the first authorized dealer for the Mercedes Smart Car in Washington state. It bascially is just the front seat row of a standard car and no trunk/boot/hatch area (it measures 8 feet long; in comparison, a Mini Cooper adds 4 feet to that). I fell in love with these cars when Mrs. F and I were in Paris last year. But it's highly doubtful we'll be adding this to our stable--they're frickin' expensive at $26,900 for a hardtop to a $29,900 for a convertible

The PSBJ also notes that variety of new gas, oil, and coal projects are coming to Washington state:

These projects weren't economically viable a decade ago, but with prices of oil, coal and gas now trending upward, and the most easily accessible deposits developed, exploration companies are widening their searches.

"There's no question that higher energy prices are driving much of the exploratory activity in Washington," said Tom Deacon, president of Cascadia Energy Corp. in Lynn-wood, a subsidiary of Torrent. "The higher prices give companies encouragement and economic incentives to look at areas like Washington and Oregon."

Here are a couple of tidbits on bottled water that I'm finally getting around to in my RSS reader stash (which needs to be cleaned out, so you might see some more older material in the coming days). Seems that a study published by the Earth Policy Institute has found that it's taxin gour ecosystem. First, the article summarizing the problem from Agence France Presse (via Breitbart):

The study said that demand for bottled water soared in developing countries between 1999 and 2004 with consumption tripling in India and more than doubling in China during that period.

That has translated into massive costs in packaging the water, usually in plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which is derived from crude oil, and then transporting it by boat, train or on land.

"Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year," according to the study. "Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year."

Once the water is consumed, disposing the plastic bottles poses an environmental risk.

The study, citing the Container Recycling Institute, said that 86 percent of plastic water bottles in the United States end up as garbage and those buried can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

In addition, some 40 percent of the PET bottles deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004 ended up being shipped to China.

The study warned that the rapid growth in the industry has also ironically led to water shortages in some areas, including India where bottling of Dasani water and other drinks by the Coca-Cola company has caused shortages in more than 50 villages.

Treehugger followed up that news with this very informative post about the various methods of water delivery (Lexan, glass, HDPE, PLA, home filtering).

Now, a swing through the news:

• The IMF will say in its World Economic Outlook report that "global current account imbalances are likely to remain at elevated levels for longer than would otherwise have been the case, heightening the risk of sudden disorderly adjustment". The IMF will say in its World Economic Outlook report that "global current account imbalances are likely to remain at elevated levels for longer than would otherwise have been the case, heightening the risk of sudden disorderly adjustment". [Financial Times via MSNBC]
  
  
• Next week, the Senate Appropriations Committee will consider adding money to President Bush's $19 billion request aimed at helping the Gulf Coast recover from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mississippi officials hope the panel approves funding to build 20,000 Katrina Cottages. Treehugger (from which this tidbit comes) likes them because they're cheaper and safer than a FEMA trailer, and are also more permanent; additions can be built, turning the cottage into a home. Herein lies the difficulty, though: under federal law, FEMA cannot spend money on "permanent" housing. Governors of both Mississippi and Louisiana as well as members of the Louisiana Recovery Association are lobbying hard for the Cottage as a better option.
  
  
• Also from Treehugger is a short interview with Paul Scott (co-founder of Plug In America, an alliance of green car advocates) about plug-in hybrids. If you're new to the plug-in hybrid concept, The Week magazine has a good primer.
  
  
• The European satellite Cryosat 2, slated for launch in March 2009, will determine for the first time the rate of polar ice melt, which is a vital piece for understanding the changes the planet's climate is undergoing. So far, the estimates about ice volume at the poles are based on isolated measurements and offer contradictory results. For example, some figures indicate that while the ice surface in the Arctic diminished nine percent in 30 years, it increased by about the same amount in that period in the Antarctic. The Cryosat 2 mission, which was given the green light in February, should provide definitive information in this regard. [IPS]
  
  
• Sales of full-size SUVs dropped 28% in March from the same month the year before, from 145,918 units to 105,745. All automakers experienced the decline, although a very few models, notably the new GM Tahoe and the Ford Range Rover line-up, saw sharp increases in sales. Aggregate sales of hybrid light-duty vehicles climbed in March to a total of 17,861 units, up 7.5% from 16,619 in March 2005. [from Mike Millikin's This Week in Sustainable Mobility over at World Changing]